You should go water cooling but not used a closed system. Air is quick and cheap though.

I run my over clocked i7 / x79 / 32GB with over clocked GPU and when watching movies in the home theater I can not even tell its on. When its time to play games or do something CPU intensive I go to the fan controller and turn up the fans.

Overclocking form 3.6 to 4.5 and with a overclocked GPU my average temperature is only 55c. The case still has its room temperature to it when touched if not cooler.

I have attached a picture of my system and it was worth the extra effort by all means.

Nowadays, you don't really need liquid cooling. A good high-end air cooler will do, save power, and have a lot less headaches down the road. Also, you can probably buy quieter fans than a low noise pump. I'm hardcore into silent computing and I've pretty much only used air for my main desktop. I got a water cooled desktop in my basement and it's too "loud" for my likings, haha. In fact, I've replaced every HDD in my main desktop with SSDs just to cut the motor noise... now I have 3 SSDs in there (OCZ Vector 256GB, OCZ Octane 512GB, and a Patriot Pyro SE 240GB). Yes, in the same computer. All my fans are Noctua PWM fans running at low RPMs in normal conditions, and my PSU is a Seasonic Platinum 1000W.

My main PC is a Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.6GHz. My 'spare' PC with water cooling is a Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz.

Nowadays, you don't really need liquid cooling. A good high-end air cooler will do, save power, and have a lot less headaches down the road. Also, you can probably buy quieter fans than a low noise pump. I'm hardcore into silent computing and I've pretty much only used air for my main desktop. I got a water cooled desktop in my basement and it's too "loud" for my likings, haha. In fact, I've replaced every HDD in my main desktop with SSDs just to cut the motor noise... now I have 3 SSDs in there (OCZ Vector 256GB, OCZ Octane 512GB, and a Patriot Pyro SE 240GB). Yes, in the same computer. All my fans are Noctua PWM fans running at low RPMs in normal conditions, and my PSU is a Seasonic Platinum 1000W.

My main PC is a Core i7-3770K overclocked to 4.6GHz. My 'spare' PC with water cooling is a Core i5-2500K overclocked to 4.5GHz.

I can believe it. I think one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding water cooling is that it leads to quiet computing.

The heat still needs to be displaced and most water cooling setups have loud fans for this purpose.

The main domain of water cooling has been and should stay over clocking. The benefit of it is increased cooling efficiency at higher temps not in noise reduction.

I can believe it. I think one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding water cooling is that it leads to quiet computing.

The heat still needs to be displaced and most water cooling setups have loud fans for this purpose.

The main domain of water cooling has been and should stay over clocking. The benefit of it is increased cooling efficiency at higher temps not in noise reduction.

Heh, well it did lead to quieter computing for me - you have the option of a very large rad with big slow spinning fans - the heat is displaced by the large surface area. As I said I tried my 670's on air for a day and it drove me nuts. For me it's quieter, better overclocking headroom and has the nice kicker of dumping all my heat externally to the case too. I don't find pump noise as issue either - it's entirely silent when mounted with appropriate deadening material. Again, YMMV but this is my current setup and i'm very happy with the result as a noise-intolerant individual - but to reiterate i'd steer people clear of it because it's expensive and a lot work. It can lead to very quiet computing but then that's entirely implementation specific - there's a vast range of rads, pumps, fans (or passive), layouts and techniques to consider. In all the years of WCing I don't think i remember every having what i'd term as a loud fan and I think i've only had undervolted fans too.

I've been very impressed with the leaps and bounds air has taken over the years though.

I wouldn't say i'm a bleeding edge overclocker - but when I do need to ramp up the GPUs it's nice to have temps half that of air (at load) as starting point

I got an NH-D14 after a bad experience with a Corsair H80 (it leaked... ruined my board). I had the same issue, Dan, but my system supports the massive NH-D14 just fine without flexing the board, and the RAM slots on my board are well-spaced enough, though one stick does sit underneath the huge cooler. I'm using it inside a Fractal R3 mini case and despite the smaller, MATX case size it fits just fine with enough room for everything else.